Design
criterias of railed vehicles emphasize logicaly the comfort and the safety of the passengers.
In urban areas, they also take into account the vibration impact on the
environment. In such a case, the dynamical models of the vehicle, the rail
and the ground are coupled. Experimental procedures have been developped to characterize the ground and the rail and
obtain the parameters needed to build models. A software
allowing to evaluate the vibration impact of urban railed vehicles has been
programmed, thanks to a partnership with Bombardier Europe, the STIB and
the Walloon region.

The
Department has also research activities in numerical methods to simulate
and optimize dynamical and kinematical behavior of systems. Besides the use
of commercial codes, the Service has developped
its own home-made software named EasyDyn, based on a generalized
coordinates approach. The main applications are about terrestrial
transportation (design of the architecture of urban transportation
vehicles, transmission components simulation,…) in
partnership with Bombardier Europe and AW Europe (tram 2000 of Brussel, LRV Vehicle of Minneapolis, automatic gearbox
AISIN AW,…).

The study of acoustics is
naturally combined with the study of the vibrations. Step by step, the
Service spreads its competences to the acoustics and vibro-acoustics.
The Service has measurements equipments (omni-directional
sources, data acquisition systems, analyzers, microphones,
...) and simulation softwares to study
noise issues and illustrate the lessons of acoustics.

- Ben Fekih
L., Kouroussis G., Verlinden
O., Development of a User-Friendly and
Open-Source Multibody Framework with the Help of Symbolic Tools, 4th
International Congress Design And Modelling Of
Mechanical System, 2011, Sousse, Tunisia